Thomasina’s last waltz

Hard by a fountain

My title today comes from a 16th-century ditty by Hubert Wælrant, which used to give us hysterics when I was in high school. Perhaps we sight-read it once, or maybe it was just in an anthology that we used in choir. Anyhow, it was simply too much for our collective immaturity and cleverness. [The typesetter in my linked pdf seems to have taken the joke a step further with an unconventional spelling of shepherd.]

Opera Australia reminded me of it on Wednesday by presenting two operas, both of which feature fountains and neither of which actually shows one. That would be “Hard [to come] by a fountain”, I guess.

So the show was a double bill, Handel’s Acis and Galatea followed by Purcell’s Dido and Æneas or, as originally publicised, and already discussed, the other way ’round. I’d agree that the final order was the stronger one, and would have been even without the Big Star in Dido. 

And there’s really one reason why I say that: this production of Acis and Galatea leaves me cold in a way that Dido and Æneas couldn’t and doesn’t.

A small part of it is Handel’s fault. One of Roger Covell’s two essays in the program book hints at the reason for this, by pointing to Handel’s earlier serenata, which sets the same story with an Italian libretto, Aci, Galathea e Polifemo (1708). Covell points to the stronger dramatic qualities of the serenata: it introduces “the threat of Polifemo into the opening duet”, allows “Aci to make enough undaunted response to Polifemo to gain some credibility as a hero” and gives Polifemo a chance to savour his revenge while regretting “that his tender feelings for Galathea have been turned into unforgiving anger”.

On the other hand, Acis and Galatea, despite Handel’s glorious and magnificent music, seems dramatically superficial. Perhaps this is as good a reason as any to give it a production populated with “beautiful people” for whom life is one long party, or perhaps one long catwalk. Modern narcissism and modern scrutiny gets a look-in as the chorus of nymphs and shepherds photograph and film each other, projecting the results in real time on a scrim. [It was actually lovely to see those close ups and behind-the-front-line details projected in this way, but it does send a certain message when the camera operator is herself wearing the obligatory white frock.]

Peter McCallum’s review made a point about the challenge of presenting the pastoral/serenata genre, with its idealised rural and mythological themes. We might still have a taste for myth, but the idea of playing shepherds and shepherdesses in a world where no one ever throws a sheep, or drenches it, or shears it, or sends it to market is just too naive. (In much the same way, going out into the gardens of Versailles in a simple muslin frock and pouring one’s own tea no longer convinces as an evocation of the joys of peasant life.)

The trick then, is to find a plausible modern equivalent for an idyllic world in which, according to its rules, no one is ever hurt. Director Patrick Nolan offers one solution by turning the serenata back on its own performance context: ephemeral and private entertainments, staged by the privileged for their own delectation. This, then, becomes the scene for Acis and Galatea. As Nolan puts it: “a world of celebrity where people party hard and everyone wants a piece of the star. The surface is all.”

It’s very glamorously done, but it is hardly an idyllic world (only the table dancer with his iPod seems to have found that and, for all we know, he isn’t even listening to Handel). And from the opening moments of the overture this scene tells you that, for sure, someone will be hurt.

The concept also allows Nolan to give his characters some very modern affectations not actually to be found in the words they sing, or even in their music. Boredom and ennui, for example. 

Nolan again: “When we [the audience] meet Galatea, she is bored by it all. The sheen of constant sex and drugs and rock’n’roll has begun to tarnish. In Acis (Henry Choo) she finds someone who is also looking for more.”

Or you know, maybe she’s so wildly in love with the young and beautiful Acis that everything else in her quite lovely and innocent world has simply paled into insignificance as a result. Just a thought.

But what would a contemporary opera production be without a little onstage fellatio and cocaine snorting? [I’m sure it wasn’t snuff, that’s so 18th-century, and in any case you don’t inhale snuff in neat lines from a page of your Moleskine reporter.] Damon does (or receives) the honours. I confess it left me unmoved. And apart from the gentleman who called out “Rubbish!”, I suspect it left most of the audience unmoved. More important, it left Henry Choo’s Acis distinctly unimpressed as well. If these are the joys and pleasures that are meant to stop Acis running after his beloved Galatea, Damon will need to try a lot harder.

And that’s the thing. For all its fantasy and artifice, baroque music sought above all to move the passions of its listeners. To present Acis and Galatea as something coolly superficial and heartless does it an injustice.

Dido and Æneas is anything but heartless, which is why it was right to make it the second half.

Purcell’s work is dramatically more satisfying, and this production makes many appealing and convincing gestures. As a friend observed, it also exploits the one asset of the Opera Theatre stage – its remarkable depth – by setting up a forced perspective with a tiny Æneas standing at the far rear all through the opening numbers before he makes his entrance. Dramatically, Dido and Æneas maintains a fine balance between tender, noble feeling, sinister machinations, and raucous humour, and the production delivers all three. 

If I have a complaint, it’s the puzzling matter as to why Opera Australia would go to the trouble of assembling period instruments but then not cast with an equally stylistic ear for vocal sound. Although, perhaps it’s not so puzzling a matter. “And ever and anon, she sadly sighed.”

Escalators

This is what’s in store for us at the Sydney Opera House. Humble escalators, more than 30 years after the building opened. I can’t believe there weren’t elderly or otherwise less-agile people wanting to go to concerts and operas and ballets in the 1960s and 70s, but for some reason it just never occurred to ‘them’ to include escalators or even public lifts in the original building. 

Well, better late than never. Although, it’s not as if there haven’t been solutions up until now. Those with titanium knees and other exotic accessories are able to pop around to Stage Door, where they’re escorted to a backstage lift that takes them straight to the main foyer level. My mother does this all the time, and I suspect that, once the escalators are completed, she’ll rather miss the frisson of that little glimpse of the backstage world. She is her daughter’s mother after all. And you don’t see sights like this in the foyers.

What was I doing at the Opera House tonight? Impromptu attendance at the opera: the A&G D&A double bill, otherwise being publicised as Baroque Masterpieces. I’ll save writing up my observations for a more godly hour of the day. The program editor in me does wonder, though, why Henry Purcell’s portrait was selected to sit alongside the title page billing of Handel’s Acis and Galatea, while Mr Handel’s portrait sits beside the billing for Dido and Æneas. And the programmer in me wonders whether this was the result of a change of performing sequence at some point.

In which news of Michael Jackson's death reminds Thomasina of how she came to own the Thriller album

I don’t listen to radio news and I don’t own a television. So I first heard about the death of Michael Jackson via this post from The Guardian music blog, while checking my Google reader feed on the way to work. I was thrown by the Glastonbury festival angle, and I couldn’t decide whether it was some elaborate in-joke of which I’d missed a crucial part or reporting around genuine news. I discovered later: this wasn’t a joke.

It’s a pity, really, that in recent years the only time Michael Jackson caught my attention (which means, in effect, the mainstream media’s attention) was when a story emerged about some new craziness or weird behaviour, rather than for any musical achievement. In fact, the only songs of his that I could bring to mind are those on the Thriller album. And therein lies my Michael Jackson story.

It was 1984. I was a self-proclaimed Culture Club fan (and my consciously cultivated high school foray into pop culture and resulting choice of allegiances is a post in itself). Boy George and his band were huge, they were making their first Australian tour, and I wanted to go to the concert. Very badly.

But my mother said, No.

I was devastated.

One of my big sisters took pity on me. Consolation surprise gift: a copy of the Thriller LP.

I doubt it consoled me one bit, if anything I was perplexed. But I was still very pleased to receive it, and the biggest-selling album of all time played its own important role in the aforementioned foray into pop culture.

It’s been observed elsewhere: Thriller was the last album on which Michael Jackson appeared looking like who he was: a young African-American male. That was 27 years ago. And it’s sad that at only 50 years of age he’d come to look like a shadow of his former self. Never has a cliché been so apposite.

[Happy ending: my wonderful wonderful sister, who would have been in her 20s at this point, was able to persuade my mother that she would be a responsible chaperone for a pop concert and I saw Culture Club after all. This has always been the advantage of having significantly older sisters: it’s like having a couple of really cool aunts. I do recall the usher at the Entertainment Centre apologetically explaining that he’d have to check our bags for cameras. My sister, who’d just been to Europe, said “Oh, that’s ok. In London they check for bombs…”]

Typos I have known and loved

Back in the old days – well, 13 years ago – the Australian orchestras’ program notes were often scanned from the previous published use, treated to an optical character recognition process, and re-typeset.

Proofreading was much more entertaining in those days.

Foreign words and characters proved especially interesting, and OCR misinterpretation of these is the source of my favourite madeupical: Die Schopfling [a shopping spree], from Haydn’s long-lost retail therapy oratorio.

But the very best was this one – not so much for the error itself, but the correction applied to it by a colleague in one of the orchestras:

The overture, it was claimed, “begins with an orchestral tutu” [tutti].

P couldn’t resist an insertion:
“…and ends in a strapless evening frock.”

Open letter to the boy with a blogged dose

My heart goes out to you: you seem to have caught a nasty head cold and dad has dragged you off to an orchestral concert regardless.

I guess there’s some reason why you’re unwilling or unable to blow your nose, but must you really sniff your way through an entire performance?

Simple pleasures

First thing this morning: I downloaded the update for the iPod touch.

And now, at last…

Cut and paste. Cut and paste. Cut and paste. Cut and paste. Cut and paste. Cut and paste. Cut and paste. Cut and paste. Cut and paste. Cut and paste. Cut and paste. Cut and paste. Cut and paste. Cut and paste. Cut and paste. Cut and paste. Cut and paste. Cut and paste. Cut and paste. Cut and paste. Cut and paste. Cut and paste. Cut and paste. Cut and paste. Cut and paste. Cut and paste. Cut and…

[I know, it should be “copy and paste”, but “cut and paste” sounds better.]

I noticed on Friday night that Apple Optus-promoting-the-iPhone had erected a large inflatable pavilion in First Fleet park near Circular Quay in preparation for today’s launch. It was labelled “Happiness”. They’re not wrong – I’m happy.

Sub-editors

About March last year, someone who should know explained to me how the Sydney Morning Herald was assigning stories to sub-editors. With the exception of the sports pages, she said, there were no section specialists. In a system that sounded a bit like taking a ticket at the David Jones delicatessen counter, sub-editors would work on whichever story popped up next in the electronic queue. My source, I thought, would have been very well placed to function as an arts specialist, but it evidently hadn’t occurred to anyone at the paper that they might exploit her superior knowledge. 

Perhaps if they had, the SMH could have avoided the embarrassing review that came out last week in response to the SSO’s Romantic Perfection concert.

I have every sympathy for reviewers: for each concert they need to write something pithy and insightful and they have to do it fast. If typographical errors, or perhaps Freudian slips, turn up in the mix it’s really quite understandable. And in the case of a major daily broadsheet like the SMH, a reviewer should – I would have thought – be able to rely on the sub-editors and proofreaders.

Apparently this is not so. We got Hugo instead of Hugh, at one point Wood instead Wolff (or Wolf!), the wrong date for the performance, and, to add insult to injury, a particularly ungainly and meaningless headline that doesn't bear repeating. (Prima la musica theorised to me that this headline was devised by the same soul responsible for “A Domingo stole our ladies”. That seems entirely plausible.)

But the really puzzling stories are the ones where the sub-editor takes it into his or her head to change something that was correct in the reviewer’s original text, as when composer Georges Lentz turned up as “George Lenz” in the SMH last year. [Needless to say, it’s equally perplexing how these spelling errors are allowed to remain in the online versions.]

Or, about 10 years ago, when a sub-editor at the Melbourne Age decided, in a review of cellist Lyn Harrell, to switch all the reviewer’s masculine pronouns to feminine ones.

I can only echo Professor Diggory Kirk and mutter: What do they teach them in sub-editor school?

Lectures and conversations

Marcellous’s long-awaited return to the melon patch began with his annual report of the Stuart Challender “lecture” – this year an interview with pianist Stephen Hough. Perhaps we should stop calling it a lecture – it seems to adopt an interview format at least half the time, it being true that a solo lecture takes a lot more preparation for the guest.

In any case, this year’s Challender event quite restored my faith in the conversation format following the recent Sydney Writers’ Festival. Alex Ross of The Rest is Noise fame was a festival guest, with two spots on the program: an “in conversation” at the Sydney Theatre and a lecture at the Sydney Opera House Drama Theatre. I had decided to attend just the lecture, but the late offer of a ticket to the interview saw me attending both. My original instincts were entirely justified.

The SWF conversation was, in a word, hugely disappointing. (Yes, that’s two words – that’s how disappointing it was.) Ross’s interviewer appeared to have given his book only a very cursory reading and didn’t seem to have much grasp of the subject matter generally. The result was a lame set of questions and a dull and disjointed presentation. I spent most of the evening wishing that Andrew Ford were doing the interviewing. Then we could have witnessed a real conversation between two thoughtful, musical minds. It was only towards the end that I recalled that Andy had a competing engagement on Bennelong Point and wouldn’t have been available anyway. A great pity.

By contrast, the Challender event saw a conversation between an artist and someone who had worked with him in programming and who shares many of his musical and other interests. I’d agree that most of Stephen Hough’s views and ideas had already been raised on his blog, which is lively, frequently updated and impressive in the extent to which he engages with his commenters. But I’m not sure that this would have been any different if he had prepared a formal lecture. Experiencing the artist away from the piano was, in all fairness, the true theme of the evening, although Stephen and David Garrett didn’t shy away from the advertised topic of “music and spirituality”. 

Back to Alex Ross. The beginning of his lecture was delayed by an unfortunate accident – a woman fell and injured herself on the auditorium stairs – but once it got underway it was clearly in a different league to the earlier conversation. Even before considering the content, there was a remarkable change to the character of his vocal delivery. Where, in the conversation, he’d come across as a bit subdued and unvaried in colour and pacing (perhaps jet lag? perhaps the uninspiring questions?), the lecture saw him delivering a script of his own structuring and with that came a more animated style, and deftly injected drama and humour. This is not really surprising: he’s a writer rather than a raconteur and I imagine that being in control of his own material allows his performing instincts to emerge.

If I were to summarise Ross’s theme of Classical Music in Popular Culture – admittedly several weeks later, not having taken notes – I would say that it was “don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater”. He used Jared Diamond’s book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed as a starting point. Like a society, he said, the classical music world could choose to succeed, through adaptation and change, or it could choose failure (read, extinction) by deciding not to adapt or change.

Throughout history, societies faced by competition or threat have had to decide what is an intrinsic, essential value, which must be retained for identity and integrity, and what is superficial or extraneous. Similarly, with classical music, we need to sort out what are the values – the things that if lost will cause the irredeemable damage to the art form – and what things can be safely discarded or changed, perhaps even for the better. You might, and these are my examples, believe it’s crucial, given its nature and intent, for orchestral music to be performed and heard in an appropriate acoustic space with a more or less attentive audience – that would then be a value. You might not be so wedded to rigid social conventions such as the one that currently surrounds applause between movements – such things have changed in the past and must surely change again. 

I observed at both SWF events that precisely three audience questions were taken. A letter to the editor in the SMH implied that this was some kind of policy. The Challender lecture was a little more flexible, and the questions covered more ground, although there were the inevitable few that veered in the direction of being a pretext to air a view or tell a story.

One of the Challender questions had me quite excited as it began, asking Stephen about his relationships with composers. Aha, I thought, we will get to hear whether he works with any living composers, if he’s commissioned things, perhaps he’ll talk about being a composer himself (the one topic that was neglected in the interview). Then the question continued: it was Stephen’s “relationships” with dead composers that was being asked after. Sigh. Not that the answer wasn’t a thoughtful one.

This and some of the other questions offered a reminder of the perceptions and beliefs that many non-performers hold about musical artists, sometimes quite endearingly misguided. No doubt romantic fictional accounts, and even some performers themselves, have helped nurture these: the idea of the performer channelling a dead composer or literally entering into the emotions being conveyed in the music. Stephen’s sane response to the matter of emotions during performance reminded me of the words of Tchaikovsky in relation to his Pathétique Symphony:

‘Anyone who believes that the creative person is capable of expressing what he feels out of a momentary effect aided by the means of art is mistaken. Melancholy as well as joyous feelings can always be expressive only out of the Retrospective.’

As a footnote I’ll mention that the indefatiguable Stephen Hough has also been making guest appearances in the pre-concert talks for his concerts with the SSO this week. (The last performance is on Monday night, talk at 6.15pm for a 7pm concert.) He was moved to recite a chunk of text from Walton’s Façade on Wednesday evening and pressured (I confess to adding to the vocal audience encouragement) into repeating it on Friday despite the loss of spontaneity. I suspect he won’t be enticed again. But perhaps he’ll continue to share his impressions of the Walton First Symphony, so delightfully and astutely summed up as “Sibelius in spats”. Meanwhile, as if all this hasn’t been talk enough, I’m planning to tune in to his interval feature during the live broadcast on ABC Classic FM this evening.

Making up your own mind

The other day on twitter the person behind @BBCMusicMag began a discussion (#prognotes) about program notes and their benefits or otherwise. One comment in the mix expressed a view I’ve encountered before:

“I try not to read programme notes for concerts, preferring to decide for myself about the music as heard.”

I have two responses.

First, the really beautiful thing about program notes – as opposed to, say, presentation from the stage – is that they are entirely optional. You can read exactly what and as much as you like, and you can read when you like, whether that’s before, during, or after the performance. So the program book, as a medium, is ideally suited to the kind of concert-goer who feels this way.

But my main response is one of mild disbelief. The people who say things like this are generally thoughtful and intelligent. Do they really feel incapable of reading a program note and then deciding for themselves about the music and its performance? Really??

It reminds me a little of the misguided attitude I saw when I was studying music at uni. Students were regularly offered all sorts of great opportunities to hear performances around town: free or very cheap tickets, for example, from the leading concert presenters. Good programs with good artists in most cases. And yet we all too rarely took advantage of these. (From what I hear in marketing circles, tertiary music students haven’t changed much.)

One reason was a kind of jadedness: attending concerts seemed like more study, more work. And sometimes we simply had the fiercely treasured prejudices of youth – refusing to hear certain composers or works for example, because we’d decided against them. But another frequent reason went along the lines of: “Oh I don’t want to go and hear so-and-so play such-and-such – it might influence my interpretation.” To which the proper response should have been: Puh-lease! (At least, that’s what I would say to my younger self if I could time travel, before dragging myself by the collar to every concert on offer.)

How arrogantly insecure we were to think that hearing a professional performance of a great piece of music would in any way damage our ability to make our own interpretative decisions. I won’t call the program note non-readers arrogant, but I do wonder why they seem to have so little faith in their ears and their own good judgement and imagination that a humble program note would be so influential.

Topsy-turvy

About eight or nine years ago I visited the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and was shown around their offices in the handsome blue “Apollo” konserthuset (where they award the Nobel prizes). On one wall was a large display case with program sheets, most of them – as best I recall – dating from the very late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century.

What struck me about these programs was how many of them began with the symphony then, after interval, continued with a concerto or similar and ended with a shorter orchestral piece, in most cases something fairly upbeat (various representatives of the “overture” genre).

This is a complete inversion of the standard program that forms the bread and butter of most orchestral seasons now. We’re used to the overture – concerto – interval – symphony formula and, with a few exceptions, that’s mostly what we get. So it was interesting to see such a different conception of programming from not all that long ago.

Last week was, I thought, an instance where a program might have benefited from being turned on its head. As great and poetic as it is, Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony doesn’t really end in a way that lifts you onto your feet with enthusiasm; Berlioz’s Roman Carnival should. How I would have loved to have heard this program with the Beethoven first and the Berlioz last. (The greatest violin concerto of all would remain in the middle.)

There might be disadvantages to this way of organising things: any late-comers will miss at least one movement of what is likely to be the meatiest work on the program and perhaps the piece they came for; and orchestras have to launch into the performance without the overture-as-preparation that they’ve become accustomed to.

But I believe the advantages could outweigh all these objections and perhaps those Swedish programmers of the past knew what they were about. First, you get to hear (or play) the longest and probably most demanding work while you’re fresh, not at the end of a long concert at the end of a long day. Second, as with a meal, you begin with a main course and conclude with the musical equivalent of dessert, leaving the hall energised and with a refreshed palate. At the same time, the placement of the interval means that there’s no need to worry about the challenges of “following” the symphony or major work with anything else – it still stands alone, framed by non-music, as it would in a second half.

I’d like to see more orchestras try this kind of thing more often. And perhaps I will.